April
Sub-archives
Apr 30, 2010
Open source communities must protect their interests
When Oracle bought Sun the first reaction in the mySQL open source community was to fork it. Now PGP may need a fork following Symantec’s purchase of PGP Corp., and speculation it may favor Guardian Edge instead. There is an important lesson in all this. The interests of open source communities and the corporations that control a project are not always the same. read more...
Picking the right open source projects
As usage grows, so too does your responsibility to minimize risk when selecting products and using source code read more...
Apr 28, 2010
Media in the age of open source
The seizure of Jason Chen’s stuff for getting his hands on a pre-beta iPhone took me back 25 years, then dropped me back into the present. read more...
Open source my software but not my data
Like Google before it, Facebook is now coming under increased scrutiny over the meaning of the term “open” in an online world. Open software is good. Open data? Maybe not so much. read more...
Apr 27, 2010
Switching costs are the key to open success
Open source is a product of the Internet, and its success rides on Internet values. A key Internet value is low switching costs. (Well, no switching costs.) So when the costs of switching are low or non-existent, an open approach is going to win out over time. read more...
Where are all the open-source mobile developers?
Even as Google and other technology companies bet big on mobile computing, open-source developers seem to be fixated with "desktop" and server environments. If the future is mobile, why isn't this where open-source developers are focusing? read more...
Apr 26, 2010
Open source after the venture capital fire
After the fire the fire still burns Quoting Pete Townshend dates me, but I have seen this movie many times before. read more...
Apr 22, 2010
Not all IBM Linux can be put in a red hat, SUSE
Novell’s SUSE Linux has beaten Red Hat to an IBM alliance in the area of software appliances. The two companies announced today that IBM is delivering a portfolio of “software appliances” under a variety of IBM brands, powered by Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. read more...
Google-government conflict goes global
The battle between Google and government widened considerably this week, with Google seeking to identify evil policies for its users and governments calling Google’s own policies evil. read more...
Apr 20, 2010
Talend cash does not mean venture window open wide
Talend announced another $8 million round of funding for its open source data management solutions. read more...
Red Hat's Fedora taps Zafara open source groupware for 13
Red Hat’s selection of Zafara as an open source groupware component in Fedora 13 is very interesting. Zafara, the beta of Fedora 13 code named “Goddard,” was made available on April 13. The final version is expected in mid May. read more...
Apr 19, 2010
The viability of open source forking
OpenSolaris reminds us why open community matters far more than open code. Source code availability is a central factor in establishing trust in the open source community, as knowledge that the source is available can often allay fears about the future of a particular open source project or product. And yet, this trust can often be overstated. read more...
Apr 16, 2010
The viability of open source forking
OpenSolaris reminds us why open community matters far more than open code read more...
Google and Sun differences are more than source deep
Matt Asay suggests that Google and Sun made the same bets on the future, and so far only Google has won. (To the right, the best CEO ponytail evah!) I would like to respectfully disagree. Not just that they made the same bet. But that Google has won. read more...
Apr 15, 2010
The importance of there being another open source codec
Google’s apparent decision to open source the VP8 video codec will mostly be discussed today in terms of Google’s ambitions, about Google TV, and about HTML5. read more...
Code ownership the key for government open source
Robert Galoppini writes that the Italian Constitutional Court has ruled legal a preference for open source software by the government. He takes the opportunity to look at the worldwide trend, and generally finds that it peaked a few years ago. read more...
Apr 14, 2010
VC funding for OSS-related vendors up 38% in Q1
Good news from the 451 Group to startups and cash strapped incumbents: venture capital funding for open source vendors grew almost 40 percent to $89 million in the first quarter of 2010. read more...
The IBM open source pledge amended
This just in. Florian Mueller is still mad at IBM. “IBM still hostile, dangerous and utterly hypocritical,” he writes, in asserting its patent rights against TurboHercules when it did not assert them against Hercules, the open source project on which it is based. read more...
Apr 01, 2010
Are Microsoft Office and OpenOffice irrelevant?
Boy Genius Report has posted screenshots of the new Microsoft Office 11 for Mac, suggesting that it looks "absolutely delicious." Do you care? read more...
Integration is the new innovation
technology. Great companies integrate existing technology. At least, that's how innovation happens today. Apple gets a lot of credit for its highly polished products, and rightly so. It may be, however, that Apple is simply the best at putting a pretty face on tightly integrated home-grown and open-source projects like FreeBSD (underpinning Mac OS X), Lucene (powering search on iTunes), and more. read more...
